The Routine

Before I get into the real topic of today's post, a quick health update. Mia was diagnosed with two hemangioma's yesterday by a pediatric dermatologist. Hemangiomas are basically clusters of blood vessels gone amock. The clusters grow for some unspecified amount of time, and then over another unspecified amount of time they receed. In Mia's case they are both under the skin, with one on her nose, and one on her eyelid. At this point, the Dr. says it is too early to know just long long they will grow, or how long they will take to receed, or if any intervention will be necessary. So, we wait, keep an eye on it, and go in every few weeks for a checkup.

And now, for tonights regularly scheduled programming...

We have officially entered the phase of child rearing where we attempt to institute some sort of routine. Our routine is currently focused around bedtime, consistently winding down the night the same way every night, and it goes a little something like this:

prior to 8:15 - Ashlei and I do our best to try and eat dinner together, this usually works for at least part of dinner. At some point Mia will eat and take a short nap (this nap is very hit or miss)

8:15 (go time) - It's bath time. Ashlei gets the baby bath tub ready with some warm water, while I try and find some soothing music on the XM channels on Direct TV, and get Mia undressed. Once the water is ready, Ashlei gives Mia her bath, followed by a transfer from bath to towel in a carefully choreographed handoff that minimizes any "open air" exposure (and thus crying). Once dried off, she gets some lotion and is dressed for bed. Finding decent music on the XM channels that is agreeable to all three of us is almost the biggest challenge of all... this evening we relaxed to Holiday (Green Day), Mr. Jones (Counting Crows), and Waiting on the World to Change (John Mayer).

8:30 - the pre bed meal. This has thus far been relatively uneventful, Mia sits with Ashlei and has what is usually the last meal of the night.

9:00ish - the cool down. The goal of this part of the evening is to basically get Mia to sleep. The past three nights this has consisted of me walking in a circle around the island in the kitchen at a very specific space while bouncing Mia in my arms and singing along to Billy Joel in my Ipod. This is probably my favorite part of my day, as Mia stares directly at me the entire time I'm singing to her, and then doses off to sleep. Thankfully, I love Billy Joel and Mia apparently is relaxed by me singing his songs (and those of you have heard me sing can attest to just how impossible that is to believe). It only takes a song or two and she is out cold.

9:15ish - the final transfer. Mia is put to bed... not in her crib, mind you, but in her car seat.

For the past two nights, following this routine, Mia has slept until 6:30. Yep, 6:30. I have no idea if that will last, but we'll take it while we can get it.

Moving right along

It's been a while since my last post, so I apologize to all of you that are waiting patiently for the latest and greatest. Over the past week and a half we have revised our thinking on the acid reflux vs. colic debate. Although the acid reflux medicine seemed to help a little bit early on, it never really got rid of the problem, and nothing really changed either way when we stopped giving it to Mia. Combined with the lack of any other reflux symptoms, I doubt she ever had reflux, so we are now just going with colic. Based on the various colic anecdotes I've heard from friends that went through that with their kids, I would classify Mia's as mild... so we are thankful for that (and sorry for those that had to endure severe cases).

Ashlei did some reading on colic and found some things that seem to be working well, although none work every time. For a few days, wrapping her up tight in a swaddle, leaning her all of the way back in her swing and turning it on full speed calmed her right down and put her to sleep for a while. For the past two days keeping her in a sling seems to be doing the trick for Ashlei, and when I have her she just wants to me to be walking around. It's pretty comical actually, I can walk in circles for 20 minutes and have her completely asleep in my arms, but the second I sit down, she wakes up and starts chirping... if only we could harness that power for good.

I've heard two good baby crying quotes (paraphrased due to my lack of any decent memory for quotes)...

From Lisa, "colic is just the doctors way of telling you they have no idea why your baby is crying".

And from Erin, "Baby's cry for 4 reasons, they're either wet, hungry, tired, or there is no reason".

The oddest part of it all is that Mia is really good at night now. She goes to sleep almost every night around 9 or 9:30 and sleeps for 5 hours, wakes up to eat and sleeps a few more hours... all without much fuss. Ahslei and I will credit that to our Ninja like parenting skills... ninja because they apparently only work at night.

There are 3 new pictures up on flickr too, so check them out... she's already growing fast.

A great weekend

Whether it was colic or acid reflux, Mia is much improved, especially over the past few days. She had her first day trip on Saturday, down to Calvert County for Easter Linner with some family (it's still rural enough down there that those that are from there refer to their "hometown" by county instead of the actual town name). I can barely remember her crying for any extended period of time at all during the whole trip, which is probably the longest stretch I could say that for.

While there we discovered that Mia really liked the baby swing they had. We had tried our baby swing a few weeks ago without much luck, so when she went right to sleep in theirs we thought it was because it swung side to side instead of forward and back. Just to check we tried ours again today at home, and she has fallen asleep in it everytime... so I guess she just had to grow into it a bit. It's nice to have a place to put her down where she is comfortable and will lay on her own for a bit.

It's hard to believe it's been almost 7 weeks already, we are even talking about a trip to Busch Gardens in May. The theory is that by 3 months things will be a little more regular, at least enough to go on a trip... we'll see.

Oh yeah, and she has started smiling some... I think the first one was when the buzzer went off at the end of the Duke game. I'm glad she is already learning the important things in life.

One of the hardest things

Mia and Ashlei took their first extended trip away from the house this week, with a trip to the Annapolis mall. It was actually such an extended trip that Ashlei had to breastfeed while they were out, which luckily the Nordstrom in Annapolis mall has an area for. Apparently, it's where moms go to both breastfeed and to have what would anywhere else probably be very uncomfortable conversation.

Mia also got to meet Garrett and Jackson, the sons of our newest neighbors Kyle and Erin. Ashlei and Erin are already joking about how Mia and Garret (born two weeks apart) are destined to be married. Mia decided that if she was to be married to Garrett that he should probably see the real her, so she cried most of the time... which brings me to the real topic of today's post.

...the hardest thing.

As you may recall from my previous post, we think that Mia has acid reflux. We've been giving her medication to treat it, with only minimal success thus far (we're hoping it just needs to be adjusted). I won't go into the details of what happens when the reflux kicks in, usually anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes after eating, but I can tell that it looks painful. Watching Mia cry out in pain during those episodes, that's the hardest thing.

1 month tune up

Mia had her one month checkup on Thursday. She weighed in at 8 pounds, 12 ounces with a length of 21 inches. They clearly don't have a reliable way of getting the length, as I think that actually went down since our last visit and I'm fairly sure she isn't shrinking. As for general health, the doctor said everything was great.

Ashlei also discussed Mia's fussiness with the Dr, and after a few questions he came back with two theories: the dreaded colic (which I'm told simply means "we don't know why your baby is crying) and acid reflux. Who knew babies could have acid reflux... I wonder if they can have carpel tunnel too. Going on the hopes that it is acid reflux, we got a scrip for baby zantac. The doc said it could take up to a week to take effect, but we are already seeing an improvement, so we are excited about that. It is such a marked improvement that Mia has actually slept through more than half of her first post-hospital visit with her mom mom and pop pop from PA. I'd say that is unusual, but it appears she likes to impress visitors and saves the real show for when she is alone with us... how nice of her :)

After the doctor visit, Mia had her first shopping trip with her mother, which apparently went off without a hitch. It went so well, that she tagged along for Mom's pedicure yesterday. Shopping and pedicures, I don't think I like the precedent this is setting...

All in all, it was a great week for Mia, mom, and dad. She is already growing fast, and we couldn't be happier with how great she is doing.

Now it's time to try and explain to Mia the delicate nuances of tonights Duke vs. UNC game. Do you root for evil dressed in blue and white? or evil dressed in a different shade of blue and white? I don't think she's ready for that yet... maybe next year.

To our friends in Texas and Ohio...

To our complete astonishment, Mia awoke in the middle of night chanting "Vote Obama!, Vote Obama!"... at least that's what it sounded like, she may have just had gas pains.

We were all very surprised to see her early interest in politics, not to mention her speech capabilities at 4 weeks of age*. Following the completion of her chanting, she made it very clear that anyone that loves her and wants to protect her future would vote for Obama.

* yep, tomorrow Mia will be 4 weeks old, woo-hoo! Everyone please wake up at 4:22 am to celebrate... beers are on me :)

And so she grows...

This last week has seen us formally introduce forumla as a permanent part of Mia's diet. She is still breastfeeding, but we theorized that she just couldn't get enough to eat with that alone, so we now supplement every feeding within some formula from a bottle. A few days into this practice it was clear that our theory had some merit. After the combination of breastfeeding and formula, Mia just seems far more satisfied and has far fewer and shorter fussy periods. She still has them, but they are more obviously just fussy periods and not hunger periods. We can deal with that, but it was hard to watch her upset with hunger.


The only other real development this week was that we moved Mia to her crib to sleep (she had been in the bassinet in our bedroom). This has probably helped Ashlei and I more than it has had any effect on Mia. When she was in the room with us we would wake up with every little movement that she made when most of the time she was just shifting or bouncing around her sleep cycles. Now, we actually sleep for the entire time that she sleeps for. The slightly longer sleeping stretches that are an apparent side effect of formula feeding are a nice bonus as well.


Mia also got her first pieces of government mail this week... her social security card and birth registration notice (apparently they no longer give you the actual birth certificate).

As a closing note, the baby scale that Matt and Lisa lent us registers Mia at around 8 1/4 pounds, so she is definitely gaining weight (reminder: 7 1/8 pounds at birth)